ConceptArt-Legions Tech Demo(large images)

EricElwell

Here are some concepts that I had done up for the Torque
Shader Engine tech demo, Legions. I did these back in
January, but wasn't able to show them until after we showed
at GDC. Anyone that went to GDC and saw the demo knows that
the art style changed quite a bit since the conceptual
stage. Screenshots of the Tech Demo can be seen here.

Anyway.. I hope you enjoy these concepts.. I definitely had
a lot of fun working on them..


This was gamut was done to help pick the tech-level of the
theme.

Character Armor:










Quicker sketches with a new spin on characters (cameo of
Adam deGrandis as a chick.)




Playing around with helmet themes.




Playing around with materials...


Early rough sketches in OpenCanvs:
Click for the OC session..



Heavy Class concepts with Pascal boss (left/bottom) and
myself (top/right)



Paint over of a (poorly proportioned) traditional roman
soldier.



I'd love to hear any comments or critiques you guys might
have. As far as critiquing, I won't be able to make
corrections to these works, but I'd love to hear your
advice, and push my future work farther.

Vailias

Looks wonderfull. It will be a good neighbor to the art style of Starsiege:2845.
I can't wait to see a better video demo than those little blurbs leaked to the net, as linked to by penny arcade.

ebit

Very unique. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of Legions as well.

Zergxes

Sweet! Now I'm thinking of the original Cylons, which is sad because this stuff kicks the crap out of the Cylons.

notman

I love some of the artwork Legions has in the demos so far. I'm part of the RenWerx group who are also making a Tribes game on TSE. If you're done with them, you're more than welcome to join us (Although I'm assuming GG paid... and we don't )

Darksun

[ QUOTE ]
Sweet! Now I'm thinking of the original Cylons, which is sad because this stuff kicks the crap out of the Cylons.

[/ QUOTE ]
Heyyyy.. Cylons were coool!
hehe, cool stuff man! We usually see Asian & English themes in futuristic armour, it's cool to have a Roman twist!

_Q_

Very cool! Probably the best modernization/futuristification of the Roman theme I've seen to date. I love the artwork, show more if you have it! Can't wait to see the concepts brought to the game.

Zergxes

(Yeah, the Cylons were cool, *BY YOUR COMMAND* ok... how about these are more detailed, and a closer aestetic homage than the Cylons.)

- I also like the parallelisms with America and Rome in that one image.

Matabus

*Cough* Imperator *Cough*

rooster

roman guys must have proper massive wangs judging by the codpieces

Kovac

[ QUOTE ]
*Cough* Imperator *Cough*

[/ QUOTE ]
Matabus that is totally rude of you to even say that. The concept of the game may be similar (the whole 'what if Rome never fell' idea), but just because it's a newer idea doesn't mean that you can give a useless comment on a critque board. Do you just post *cough* counter-strike *cough* on every swat looking character or anything that has a cartoonish/fantasy look is a ripoff of World of Warcraft that's posted on these forums? He was asking for feedback dude, not a mockery.

And again, it was merely a Tech demo, not a game in the works.

Eric I've seen and commented on these many of times so no further word from me should be necessary, but hopefully some actual critique comes from some others here.

Thegodzero

I dont think its rude for him to mention that it sure looks alot like the same designs as a game he had been working on. In fact id call that a good thing. I was at your site just the other day and saw these. I like them, but they are a bit bloby/unfinished. They dont seem to have much thought into how they would be worn and why the bits are there. its mostly details for the sake of details. You have lots of intresting elements but nothing that you would look at and know what it would be for. The coolest concepts are the ones that you could see being made in the real world.

ScoobyDoofus

Kovac: I Think his *cough* was in reference to _Q_'s comment:
"Very cool! Probably the best modernization/futuristification of the Roman theme I've seen to date"

Imperator looked pretty rad(even though it got canned), and I dont think its rude to say it looked way way better than this. Also important to keep in mind is Imperator was created by a team of talented industry veterans, whereas this is a couple indie developers making a tech demo. A world of difference really.

These drawings are pretty good, but also pretty far from being stellar. I think mostly they lack confidence (especially the arch-technology-gamut image). Very sketchy/smudgey.

EricElwell

Thegodzero: Thanks for your honest critique, I really do appreciate it. Correcting the murkiness in alot of my work is something I have been working at and continue to work towards. I have been working to correct this by drawing more in freehand to hopefully improve my line quality and placement. I would definitely agree with you on the details as well. Only a few of the details make sense, and some of the characters (particularly the second one listed) aren't very compelling or coherent. I definitely need to improve on these areas of my work, if you have any particular ways of correcting these sort've errors, I would absolutely love to hear it and would seriously consider putting it to practice. Again, thanks!



ScoobyDoofus, I couldn't disagree with you more.

[ QUOTE ]
Imperator looked pretty rad(even though it got canned), and I dont think its rude to say it looked way way better than this. Also important to keep in mind is Imperator was created by a team of talented industry veterans, whereas this is a couple indie developers making a tech demo. A world of difference really.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your assessment of GarageGames is entirely inaccurate. I am only an intern, a year out of high-school, and my work undoubtedly reflects that. The people I work under are extremely talented professionals with extensive industry experience. They more or less let me do the concepting for my own exploration and development in game art. The difference lies in the focus of company, hardly experience or skill level. As far as Metabus' post, Imperator is an entirely different subject than that of this post. It is not appropriate or professional by any means to drop a one word reply containing only the name of an unrelated project.

I want to show people what I've been working on, and ask for serious constructive criticism. If that is what you have in mind when you post, then by all means post.

Matabus

I'm just sayin'.

ScoobyDoofus

Eric: The difference is in Your art, not the art of other GarageGames staffers. They may be talented & experienced guys, but your work, and YOUR work only is what I was commenting on & comparing. I didnt even check the link you provided.

Personally, I feel comparisons to existing pieces of artwork from a similar genre is EXTREMELY important, and as you get more experience you'll probably discover that for yourself as well.

I strive usually to have my work be either as original as possible, or a pretty faithful rendition of whatever was my inspiration. In this case your work harkens to Imperator a bit, simply because the concept is so similar in casual description (roman-futuristic).

If I had drawn a silver cyborg cop, who'd been seriously injured and rebuilt by a corporation, I wouldnt take offense by somebody saying:

"OMG! Robocop!!!1one"

Because that is the obvious comparision. If you work hard, and develop your talents your work will compare favoribly. Then people would say "oh, shit! That looks like Robocop/Imperator...only cooler!".

Thegodzero

Well you asked for it...
First id think out what it is your making first before you start drawing. In this case it was to draw futuristic roman soldiers. So first how far into the future, have they been at war the whole time? Let’s say that have been at war this whole time and its modern day but in a world were the empire never died.
Ok now that you have that you look at the designs of the weapons and armor of soldiers at the end of the roman era. Ask yourself questions like what was the purpose of this; was it the best that they could make; why did they do it that way?
The armor they were wearing was very close to the best that they could make at that time. It was designed not just for protection but for being able to move in. The use of red all over was to scare the enemy and nothing else.
So now that you have that info lets see what it means. Being as they have been an empire at war for the past 2500 years their weapons and armor tech would be about 500-1000 years more advanced than what we have now. So you would have armor designed to scare all who would see it, yet made of the strongest and lightest materials they have, made in a manner that wouldn’t constrain their movement. Basically they would have anything that you can think of to give them the upper hand in battle.

I'll go more in depth if you want?

Ninjas

I was reminded of Imperator too when I opened the thread. I think it is a bit extreme to say they are unrelated, since they are both future Rome, but come on. I think everyone could see that Imperator had some deep 40K influence. I mean, it was named Imperator for chrisake! Anyway, that project is canned so future Rome is fair game I think.

About the work. Concgrats on the internship!

I think the art could use some work. I did this picture to show what I mean:

Image

This shows how I usually work. I think you need to work most on step #1, blocking out the forms, and #5 painting light and shadow.

Concept work benefits the most from observing real life stuff and how it works. Pick up a national geographic and a popular mechanics, or search the interenet. Slavishly coping from 2 different sources in one piece = cool original concept. There is nothing new under the sun, and if there is, it is probably lame or else someone would have thought of it already.